Gas Production at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as Measured by the ROSINA Instrument: Long Term Trends and Correlations with H2O and CO2

The Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument onboard the Rosetta spacecraft measured the in situ gas density of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during the full perihelion passage of the comet within 3.5au. During this time, ROSINA sampled the neutral coma, measuring the broad range of cometary species including both the major constituents such as H2O, CO2, CO as well as many other species that are interesting to the general astrophysical community, such as O2, Xe, Si and even amino acids. Many of these species are hard to detect and therefore measurements are limited to when the spacecraft was close to the comet or the production rate was high. In contrast, in this work we will consider species that are most easily measured due to either their higher production rates or the ease with which their mass peaks are located (H2O, CO2, CO, O2, 18OH, HDO, OCS, SO2, H2S, CN, HCN, NH3, CH4, C2H2, C2H3, CH3OH and F). The advantage of examining these species is that we are able to present measurements over the entire perihelion passage at reasonably high time resolution. In this work we will present two important results. First, we will examine the long-term trend and heliocentric distance dependence of the production of these species over the entire perihelion passage of 67P. Second we will consider the correlation of the production of each species with the production of H2O and CO2. The study will consider both the long term correspondence between production of different species as well as the shorter term correlation.